William Joseph Chaminade 1761‐ 1850

William Chaminade (he took Joseph as his Confirmation name and preferred it) was the second youngest of 15 children of Blaise Chaminade and Catherine Béthon. Born in Périgueux, some 60 miles northeast of , he went at the age of ten to the Collège of Mussidan (20 miles closer to the port city), where one of his brothers was a professor. First as a student, then as teacher, steward, and chaplain, he remained at the collège 20 years. The turmoil that marked the beginnings of the forced him to leave; and, except for three years in exile, he spent most of his long life in Bordeaux itself.

It was during the most trying period of the Revolution, when persecution had forced him to go underground because of threats on his life, that Chaminade met Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Lamourous. She was a very important part of the Catholic community that continued to carry on its spiritual mission in most difficult circumstances. The Archbishop, de Cicé, was in exile; the churches, when they were open at all, were in the hands of Constitutional clergy – those who had taken the schismatic oath of allegiance to the revolutionary government. Priests, such as Chaminade, who refused to take the oath were forced into hiding and had to go about in disguise. It was the laity – women in particular – who preserved and passed on the teachings of Christianity; formed a communication network for the priests who refused to take the civil oath; distributed the sacraments and provided moral encouragement to the dying, including imprisoned priests awaiting execution; instructed the young; supported the weak; and witnessed, sometimes at the cost of their lives, to the power of Christ at work within them.

Chaminade carried on his ministry in Bordeaux from 1791 to 1797, openly when he could, secretly when he had to. So successful was he in disguising himself and concealing his hiding places that the police, after numerous fruitless attempts to find him, declared he must have left the city. That meant his name was carried on the official lists of the émigrés, which contained the names of those banned from returning to . In a moment of relative tolerance in 1797, he came out of hiding to exercise his ministry openly. But a sudden shift in the political situation caught him off guard.

He was falsely accused of having returned from exile without permission and was forced to leave France. Taking refuge in Spain, he spent three years in Saragossa praying at the shrine of Our Lady of the Pillar, sharing life with thousands of other exiles, and planning for an unknown but hoped‐for return to France.

With the end of the Revolution in 1800, he returned to Bordeaux. Appointed administrator of the badly devastated Diocese of Bazas, he managed to restore it to some semblance of normalcy within two years. At the same time, he began in Bordeaux a work that would occupy him for the next 50 years.

Chaminade gathered together a number of young men and women, many of whom he had known before and during the years of persecution, and he formed a “community” of mutual support and Christian outreach that attracted people from all sectors of society and parts of the city. He first worked in limited and temporary charters, but in 1804, he established the permanent headquarters for his work in the former chapel of the Madelonnette Sisters. The site became the center of the Sodality of the Madeleine. It remains today in the hands of the Marianists and is a vital urban church in Bordeaux.

Chaminade’s concept of the Sodality was to gather all Christians – men and women, young and old, lay and clerical – into a unique community of Christ’s followers unafraid to be known as such, committed to living and sharing their faith, and dedicated to supporting one another in living the Gospel to the fullest. The enterprise was placed under the patronage and protection of the Virgin Mary. As Chaminade’s own insights developed, he came to see the Sodality as the Family of Mary, dedicated to sharing her mission of bringing Christ into the contemporary world. It was characterized by a deep sense of the equality of all Christians, regardless of state of life; by an energizing spirit of interdependence; by effective concern for individual spiritual growth; and by the desire, in Chaminade’s words, of “presenting to the world the amazing and attractive reality of a people of saints.” Side by side with him in this endeavor was Marie Thérèse, who headed up the Young Women’s and Married Women’s sections of the Sodality.

At the same time that Chaminade was administering the Diocese of Bazas and inaugurating his work with the Sodality, he was also encouraging and assisting Marie Thérèse in her efforts to provide an environment where prostitutes desirous of changing their lives might find the support they needed. In 1808 he became aware of the work that Adèle de Batz de Trenquelléon and her associates were doing in the area, some 60 miles upstream on the Garonne River. Similar in many ways to the Sodality of the Madeleine, her Association affiliated with his in Bordeaux. Out of the Sodality developed the Institute of the Daughters of Mary and the Society of Mary – the two Marianist religious orders in the Family of Mary. These three foundations – the Sodality of the Madeleine, the Institute of the Daughters of Mary, and the Society of Mary – are considered the wellsprings of the Marianist thing. They were the creations of these three people. They have common characteristics, a common spirit, and the same goals and purposes. And they all continue today as various segments of the Marianist Family.

Joseph Stefanelli, SM

excerpted from Things Marianist ‐ “Who started all this, anyhow?”